The present invention relates to a ventilated cage for keeping laboratory animals, typically rodents.
It is known that keeping animals, in this case, specifically rodents, in laboratories, is governed by standards which impose certain dimensional parameters of the keeping cages according to the animal's size, or rather to its body weight.
More in detail, the standards currently in force require that, for rats having a body weight higher than 600 grams, the keeping cages must include a surface of at least 600 cm2 for each animal.
Since two or more animals are normally located in each keeping cage, the floor surface which must be available to each rat according to the standards makes the cages quite cumbersome.
As known, the cages are arranged side-by-side in laboratories on appropriate shelves, and it is therefore intuitive that the volume of the cages is a main parameter which affects the number of cages, and thus of animals, which may be kept in a laboratory.
Therefore, keeping cages which meet the standards with regards to space available to animals are known, which however have the drawback of not rationalizing such a space, resulting in an excessive total volume of the cage.
It has further been noted that although standards impose a minimum number of square centimeters of floor surface available to each animal, even the height space available to the animal considerably affects its behaviour. The restrictive effect that a cage of unsuitable height exerts on the behavioral aspects of the animal, specifically of the rat, is indeed apparent, with regards to activities such as play, competition and exploration, which normally need the standing posture which is a negative effect which may even considerably alter the animal's natural behavior.
Furthermore, the cages must meet ergonomic and intervention ease parameters for the correct operating by experimenters.
A further problem connected with cages such as the above is that it is impossible to access their inside in order to carry out operations such as introducing food or substituting empty mangers or dirty components, without removing the lid, which may be complicated or even impossible, when the cage is placed on a shelf.
It is thus the main task of the present invention to provide a keeping cage for laboratory rodents which allows to adequately meet the requirements set forth above, thus eliminating the drawbacks left unsolved by the cages of known type.
In the scope of this task, it is the object of the present invention to provide a keeping cage which respects the standards imposed with regards to the minimum surface available to each animal.
It is a further aspect of the present invention to provide a keeping cage which is compact, light and appropriately ventilated so as to ensure micro-environmental and external element barrier parameters.
This task, and these and other objects which will be explained in greater detail below are reached by a keeping cage for laboratory animals, specifically for laboratory rats, including a basic body of the cage to which an openable lid is connected, which is characterized in that it includes inside one or more essentially horizontal partitioning floors arranged at different heights so as to create several floor surfaces for the animals.
According to a second embodiment, the invention relates to a cage for keeping laboratory animals, specifically adapted to keep laboratory animals, particularly rodents, including a base body to which an openable lid is connected, characterized in that the lid features a port for accessing the inside without removing the lid.